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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146309">Fractured Webs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet'>quantumvelvet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Everyday Witch Tarot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:15:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,170</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146309</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A gathering, a prisoner, a piper, and a tower.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fractured Webs</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartfullofelves/gifts">Alexandria (heartfullofelves)</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Three women circle in a stream, the water obscuring the trail of their magic even as it builds around them, drawing the night air hot and close.  Small fish dart in complicated patterns about their legs, between their toes, breaching the water in intervals just this side of random, the splash as they breach the water and dive back down a strange, frenetic percussion.  The trio lift their goblets high, catching the light of stars and moon in within, where it condenses to bright, glowing liquid.  The wind sighs through the trees, a sound of warning, and sends a cloud of moths winging skyward, glowing with an eerie phosphorescence against the gloom of the rocks clustered close along the riverbank.  A small black shadow launches itself skyward, catching two moths between its paws with a yodeling war cry.  Two others follow suit, gleaming orange and silver-white as they rise beyond the rocks and into the moonlight, bringing down their glowing prey.  They dance on their hind legs, batting and leaping and springing, until all of the moths have been brought down, sifting slowly into powder and glowing ichor on the rocks and grass of the riverbank.  The wind dies, wards set oh-so-carefully to shield this gathering falling quiet once more.  The black cat twitches its tail, and settles back on its haunches to lick its paws clean; as though this is a signal, its fellows begin to fastidiously clean their own fur where it is faintly spotted with the remnants of the moth-constructs.</p>
<p>The women's heads tip back, and the youngest utters a laugh of exhileration as the goblet of condensed light turns cold in her hands, vapour trickling over the rim and winding like ribbons down her arm.  Her fellows are likewise jeweled in light, thinner filaments stretching out between them, forming a web of power that creeps along arms, shoulders, chests.</p>
<p>It reaches their hearts all at once, and they abruptly stop.  The fish fall silent back into the water.  The cats watch, eyes gleaming.  Their arms lower, bringing the center of the web down between them.  The light blooms brighter, brighter, until it looks as though they hold the moon in their hands, penned by the frame of their bodies.  And then...</p>
<p>A woman, bound, bowed, blindfolded, kneeling in the bare dirt.  They can taste the air, flat and dry, sucked clean somehow of all vitality.  There is a hint of ashes on their tongues.  A ring of swords surrounds the woman, evenly spaced and painful to look upon.  They radiate cold, and the image wobbles as it focuses on them, as though the malign power of the binding has reached across space and time to drink it dry.  Something shifts within the circle, shadows coalescing, and a small velvet paw bats at one of the swords.  It shifts minutely, and one of the threads in the web snaps.  The image loses coherence, fades.  The women smile, fierce and triumphant.  They speak a name, and the web shatters, fragments of stardust spiralling up into the sky, before dispersing like a cloud of fireflies as the wind picks up once more.</p>
<p>The black cat yowls once, and tears off after it.</p>
<p>Far away, a pocket of resin pops in the heart of a campfire, sending a cloud of embers skyward.  One lands on a carved bone flute held in the hands of a slim young woman.  The wind sighs over the mouth of the flute, over the fingering, and the sound it makes is a strange whisper, almost-but-not-quite a name.  The woman nods once and rises, flute in hand.  The fire dies abruptly behind her as she raises the instrument to her lips, and sets out in time to the high, thin, eerie music.  She has a long way to travel, and not much time in which to do it.</p>
<p>She passes through a crossroads.  The grass along the roadside stirs, and a cat rises out of it, flesh and skin filling out to cover once-bare bone as it follows in her wake, each mile putting a little more spring in its step.  By the time dawn begins to break around the tower at the centre of the forest, it is a seething knot of vitality, a star condensed into skin and fur.</p>
<p>The glass between the rusting bars set into the tower windows is long broken.  The cat flows between them like a whisper, like a secret.  The young woman squares her shoulders, and the tempo of her song increases.  In the distance, thunder rumbles.</p>
<p>The cat slips down the winding stairway that spirals down along the tower wall, and the song chases after it, tension building until the air crackles and the stale air is filled with the taste of the instant before a storm.  Its footprints do not disturb the dust, and the miasma of foulness, of bitter, hungry cold that fills the tower shrinks away from it, clinging like mouldy webbing to the upper third of the walls.</p>
<p>The ground shivers as the cat sets first one paw, then another on the packed dirt of the tower's lowest floor.  The circle of swords stands straight and sharp, a razored maw opening onto the throat of some fell beast.  The bones between them have long since been stripped bare.</p>
<p>The cat sits for a moment, washes one paw, then flicks an ear as a high, clear note pierces the air.  Something gleams within the pale ribcage.</p>
<p>The cat rises again, and paces into the centre of the circle, tail twitching in contempt as it passes between the swords.  The shadows crowd closer.  The cat noses at the gleaming thing, gentle as if it were tending its own kitten.  There is a sigh, faint, tired.</p>
<p>Outside, the young woman plays one last spiralling bar.  The upper curve of the sun peeks above the horizon, and she raises her flute like a wand, like a spear, like a beacon.</p>
<p>The storm is still far off.</p>
<p>The sky splits, lightning briefly washing the gold and pink and blue of the sunrise white, blinding.</p>
<p>Light erupts from the point where the cat's soft nose meets the small gleaming jewel amongst the bones, bleaching the shadows to nothing.</p>
<p>For a moment, the swords stand out against a world gone white, steel and blood and rage and hunger.</p>
<p>And then they burst into dust.</p>
<p>There is roar like thunder, and a spray of fine powder ripples out from the tower as the mortar holding its bones in place – stops.</p>
<p>One stone falls, then another, then all of them, the structure imploding in on itself.  The young woman waits, watching, until the last one has settled into an unsteady heap.  Then she nods, and turns, and walks away, flute rising to her lips once more.</p>
<p>For just a moment, before the sun fully pulls above the curve of the earth, in the dust that still shimmers in the air, the shapes of a girl and a cat seem to follow her, dancing.</p>
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